


Mechanical Sheep

by MsChievous



Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Category: Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Angst, Chadley Whump, Fake Character Death, Gen, I will pioneer the "whumping Chadley" train, Serious Injuries, Spoilers, Whump, about Chadley cuz it's kinda hard to avoid, because I love my science boi, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26882359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsChievous/pseuds/MsChievous
Summary: Whumptober Day 7 - CarryingChadley is caught in Sector 7 when the plate falls. His rescuers think they came too late.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949494
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Mechanical Sheep

**Author's Note:**

> so uh.... hi I'm MsC and I'm a platonic simp for Chadley. And because of that I want to see him suffer sooooooo ... enjoy. Peep me makin more whump fics about the science robot bab eventually. There will be more fics even if I have to write them all myself

Chadley taps on his tablet, attempting to figure out which line of code is churning out the error. He double-checked it after all, there should be no issues. And yet, his program still spits out an error message.

He scrolls through the lines of code. One would assume that a conglomeration of code would know coding. But alas, he’s stuck manually sifting through his work and trying to figure out where the hell the problem is. 

The ground beneath them rumbles slightly and he immediately stumbles back towards the doorway of a nearby store. The rumble stops as soon as it starts and he cranes his head around. Sector 7 is nowhere near any fault lines and a quick scan of social media feeds shows that it seems to be a localized phenomenon. Something large must have-

“Hey there sweetie,” a middle aged woman crouches in front of him wearing a warm smile. A little boy plays nearby. Judging by the shared recessive genes there’s a high likelihood they are related. “Where’s your mom? I’m sure she’ll be concerned with you out of her sight,” the woman continues.

Chadley shakes his head. “I don’t have one. My… my father lives up-” he points towards the plate, stopping short when he sees the flare of explosions at its edge. The ground rocks again and he steadies himself on a pole holding up the awning he’s standing beneath. 

The woman follows his gaze and gasps. A few people nearby follow suit and soon everyone sees the collapsing pieces of the Sector 7 plate crumbling down towards them. Chadley’s in the process of calculating the best route to safety when the woman grabs his hand, yanking him alongside her. In her other hand, she clenches around her child’s wrist and takes off, nearly dragging them behind her.

They barely make it a few steps before the debris starts hitting the ground, rocking the land around them like the middle of a war zone. He stumbles slightly but manages to catch himself and move forward. 

He scans the area as they move, attempting to determine the best path. Based on the pattern of debris if they were to take the left path coming up, they would statistically be more likely to make it out without-

Another mass of wreckage thunders to the ground, so close to them that it sends them all sprawling. Had he any need to breathe, he likely would have been coughing up the dirt and dust thrown up in the air.

“Freddie?” The woman calls hoarsely.

Chadley glances around and catches sight of the young boy slumped a few feet back, rubbing his head dazedly. He hurries back to help him as the woman dazedly scrambles to her feet. No doubt the loud booming noise was affecting her balance. 

He grabs Freddie and heaves him upright just in time to hear the woman scream. His gaze snaps to her, then up to where she is looking. 

Large chunks of debris were hurtling towards them. There is no time to clear the danger completely, but the way the debris falls, they had a higher likelihood of living just over…

Chadley manages to drag the boy back and fall around him, bracing himself on his hands and knees in an attempt to shield the boy best he could. While he had never undergone extensive stress testing and therefore did not know the limits of his durability he knew two things: One: he is more durable than the average human and has a much better chance of surviving. Two: it’s the right thing to do

It’s barely a second after he braces that the first piece of debris hits. The weight feels like nothing he’s ever experienced before. He can’t feel pain, but the weight is crushing and all-consuming, like there’s nothing else to experience in the world except what is currently trying to flatten him to the ground. But he manages to hold firm, despite the warning signs flashing in his display that he was undergoing “extreme physical conditions”.

He ignores the warnings as another weight crashes on top of what is already there. An elbow buckles under the weight and the opposite shoulder pops out of the socket. 

More alerts flashed across his vision alerting him that he was about to enter critical condition, but he dismissed them all, focusing solely on keeping this weight up. He weathers another hit, and another and another. He doesn’t even have the time or mental processes to check to make sure the boy is okay, he just has to-

**_._ **

**_._ **

**_._ **

**_System Failure_ **

**_Power Supply Interrupted_ **

**_Commencing Emergency Shut-Down Sequence_ **

* * *

  
  


Cloud sets his mouth in a harsh line, eyes cut straight ahead. All this destruction, this death, this despair, because he was too slow to stop Rude. Had he been a second faster-

No, that would do him no good now. Shinra was the one at fault, they just needed to make sure they would all pay.

“Cloud?” Tifa asks uncertainly, “Our section is over this way.” She motions him over to a block of sector 7 that looked just as wrecked as the rest. “They don’t want us to move too much since that could cause trouble elsewhere, but we’re supposed to call out for people.”

The blond nods, following his childhood friend as they make their way through hauntingly familiar sights, destroyed by hunks of concrete and twisted metal.Tifa stops in front of a section of the city that looks like all the rest. It’s hard to determine exactly where they are, but he’s fairly certain they’re a ways to the west of where Seventh Heaven stood. She puts her hands on her hips and looks back at him and Barret. “Shall we?”

Not five minutes later, they come across a dirt-coated woman being comforted by a young couple. The woman seems barely responsive to the couple’s soft words of comfort, and Cloud hates to think of who she might have lost in the Fall.

As they walk alongside the debris, calling out to anyone who might be buried under the rubble, the woman glances up, then stumbles towards them. She reaches Barret first, grabbing onto the back of his vest and pointing towards a pile of the destroyed plate. “M-my son…” she mumbles.

The couple comes up to her once again. One of them ushers her back away with murmurs of “They’ll find him soon enough” while the other stays with Cloud, Tifa, and Barret. She shakes her head sadly, fists on her hips. “Leela and I found her crying here. Couldn’t make out much but it seems her son and another boy were crushed under the rubble over this way.” she points towards the rubble. “I don’t know if seeing the body would make it better or worse, honestly.”

Tifa steps forward. “Thanks, we haven’t got any other leads, so we might as well put someone at ease,” she says with a gentle smile. Cloud turns back to the rubble pile and cracks his neck anxiously. 

“We might as well get started,” he says, clambering to the top. “But we have to go slow or we could damage the structural integrity of any pockets there might be.”

“Oh, so that pretty head of yours can do more than take a hit,” Barret snorts, shimmying a large metal piece of latticework aside with Cloud’s help. The blond ignores the jab, instead shifting the latticework down to Tifa, who sets it off the pile.

The work continues in relative silence for an hour before he hears it, though he doesn’t quite believe it. He grabs Barret’s arm to keep him from moving anything else, then shushes the larger man when he starts to protest. 

Then, they all hear it: “....’lp please!” from somewhere deep within the pile they were excavating. 

“Oh my god,” Tifa whispered. 

“Sit tight kid, we’re coming for you!” Barret called.

* * *

It’s a grueling few more hours before they make any sort of meaningful progress. The sun is starting to set but the couple ran to get light sources for them to work by after hearing there was hope. But now the boy, Freddie, can speak to his mother while they work. The other boy with him is unresponsive, but the pocket they managed to land in is too dark to know for certain if he’s just unconscious or…. worse.

Finally, fucking  _ finally _ , they lift a block of concrete off the pile and a boy’s head pokes out. The mother rushes forward- nearly knocking Cloud off-balance as he and Tifa work to bring the block safely to the ground- and wraps her son in a giant bear hug. She runs her fingers through the boy’s hair, murmuring what sounds like prayers as she rocks him.

He ignores the twinge in his chest at the memory of his own mother and turns to check on the other boy. His heart momentarily stops in his chest at the sight of Chadley laying limply on his side. Even with the shitty light coming in, it’s evident that he took a much more severe beating than Freddie did.

He clambers in, assessing the situation. There’s no obvious blood, but the boy’s legs are trapped beneath rubble, and his arm looks messed up. He presses gentle fingers to the boy’s neck, praying for a pulse of some sort, but there’s nothing.

His stomach drops even more and he takes a measured breath, moving to the boy’s chest, then mouth. No pulse, no heartbeat, no breathing. 

Dead.

Cloud allows himself a growl of anger and frustration at such a young life lost so that Shinra could further their own machinations, then swallows the emotion. Instead, he nudges the metal pinning the young intern’s legs aside and scoops him up. He momentarily stumbles from the unexpected weight, but manages to catch himself and climb out of the rubble.

Tifa looks from him to the boy, eyes bright with unshed tears. “There’s a place to bring those that didn’t make it,” She says softly.

The woman glances over, catching sight of Chadley’s limp body. Her arms grip her son in a vise-like hug. “I tried,” she whispers hoarsely, “I tried-” 

Barret lays a hand on her shoulder and leads her away, speaking gently. For once Cloud is glad for the man’s presence if only because he doesn’t have the first clue of how to comfort someone in that position.

He adjusts his hold on Chadley’s body and tries not to think about how cold and heavy it is. Instead he focuses on the road ahead of him, on how they saved at least one person, and how they would make Shinra  _ pay _ .

“Oh my  _ God! _ ” Tifa shrieks, jumping away from Cloud’s side.

Cloud instinctively prepares himself for an attack, muscles prepared to pounce, but Tifa is staring at  _ him _ . Or, more accurately, Chadley.

Cloud glances down and locks eyes with the young intern. He blinks then takes in a sharp breath as the boy offers a faint smile back at him.

_ What the actual fuck? _

* * *

**_Commencing Reboot Sequence._ **

**_Checking For Updates. 1 of 100_ **

_**...** _

**_..._ **

**_Cancelling Updates._ **

**_Reboot Successful._ **

Chadley opens his eyes to the feeling of motion. His head is lolled upside down and something supports him across the shoulders and the back of the knees. From where he is he can see the ruined remains of the Sector 7 plate. He must have been recently pulled from the wreckage then. He just starts his internal diagnostics when he sees a familiar figure walking beside him. Tifa, he remembers. Then by processes of elimination it seems extremely likely that the one holding him is-

“Oh my _G_ _ od _ !” Tifa yelps. Chadley’s eyes dart over to her, meeting her gaze. It’s hard to tell if she looks confused or scared - he wasn’t programmed with the greatest ability to discern human emotion after all. He glances up and confirms his theory that he was being carried by the ex-SOLDIER. He offers a faint smile, as the blond seemed concerned as well.

“Y-you’re alive,” Tifa says, stepping forward uncertainly. 

He attempts to respond, but a pop-up informs him that his voice box had suffered major damage and was non-functional. He authorizes repairs to it as he nods. 

“You weren’t breathing,” Cloud cuts in. “You had no pulse.” He pauses. “You  _ aren’t _ breathing. What are you?” 

_ Ah _ . It seems his peripheral functions aren’t working. 

Chadley checks on the repairs to his voice box. 32% - limited functionality. Good enough. “Long story,” he manages, though it sounds like it’s coming out of an old radio. “Wanted to tell… later.” 

Cloud looks down at him, blue-green eyes unreadable. Then he shifts him around so he’s being carried piggyback style, head resting against the blond’s shoulder. “You can explain everything once you get all fixed up, for now you should just rest.”

Chadley nods and lets himself be carried as his repair systems do their work. They wouldn’t be able to fix everything and he more than needed a trip to Hojo’s lab if his internal diagnostic was anything to go by. But for now, things were okay.


End file.
